Violent Acts, Clouded Judgment

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: November 19, 1999

The recent violent attacks against New Yorkers seemed as random as they were terrifying, occurring during the most mundane slices of the day -- a sleepy subway commute, a routine errand on a busy Midtown street. But in the public view, they also shared another trait -- the attackers appeared to be mentally unstable.

Such crimes provoke a visceral and by now predictable reaction. Suddenly every obviously disturbed person who enters a subway car or coffee shop takes on the menacing aura of a disaster waiting to happen. There is a vague sense that failures within the mental health system are endangering New Yorkers' lives, and lawmakers call for murky reforms.

But experts on the mentally ill and crime strongly concur that most mentally ill people are not a threat to anyone. They stress that recent crimes -- a pair of pushings in Manhattan subway stations, a young man with a box cutter who sliced the faces of commuters, the beating of a woman with a brick in Midtown this week -- are statistical anomalies, unfortunate but ultimately coincidental.

''The lay wisdom has been that mentally ill people are more dangerous,'' said Christopher Slobogin, a professor of law at the University of Florida who specializes in mental illness. ''However, the research does not support the proposition.''

There are some recent studies that suggest a slightly elevated risk of violence among those who are mentally ill, compared to the general population. But that risk is limited to a very small pool of people with extreme cases of manic depressive psychosis or schizophrenia, and rises more when those particular people abuse drugs or alcohol.

And mentally ill patients with a criminal background do have a deficit of services and supervision, which is significant because the people most likely to commit violent crimes are those who have committed them in the past.

The public outcry over violent incidents involving mentally ill people is sharpened by the perception that solutions to the problem are obvious and within reach. Give the mentally ill more services, monitor their medications and behavior or, for more resistant cases, keep them hospitalized or imprisoned for as long as possible, the arguments go, and tragedies will be few and far between.

In no case did these arguments seem more painfully clear than in that of Andrew Goldstein, who prosecutors say pushed Kendra Webdale to her death in a subway station last January. Mr. Goldstein, who had been in and out of the state's mental health system in the years preceding Ms. Webdale's death, pleaded insanity; his case resulted in a hung jury last month, and will be retried next year.

But experts warn that failures in the mental health or legal systems, as real as they may be, do not really account for these random acts of violence, and responding to them in the legislative system only creates bad policy.

''You have to un-couple the relationship between mental illness and violence and the delivery of services,'' said Michael L. Perlin, a professor at New York Law School. ''These are discrete, vivid cases of people who act out in these very frightening ways, and are not endemic to people in the New York system.''

The disproportionate fear of mentally ill people committing crimes stems in large part from the way the crimes are carried out. Unlike the majority of violent acts, which tend to befall victims by known attackers, attacks by mentally ill assailants are often random and inexplicable, creating a sense that anyone anywhere is a potential mark.

Indeed, Ms. Webdale's death struck a chord with New Yorkers precisely because, unlike cases where crimes result from disputes or robberies, this attack came in a place the mayor and police have argued is more or less safe these days, in a situation millions of residents find themselves in daily.

''If you look in absolute terms,'' said Professor Slobogin, ''if you are attacked in a subway, it is much more likely to be by a non-mentally-ill person than a mentally ill person. But it may be that when the perpetrator is mentally ill, the attack is more clearly random. And random attacks are what scare people.''

In May, Julio Perez, who was homeless and schizophrenic, was charged with pushing a man in front of a No. 6 train that severed the man's legs. Damien Purrier, a high school student whose life had seemed to unravel in a tangle of anger, was arrested last week on charges that he slashed several commuters during a terrifying ride on a Manhattan-bound subway train.

Mr. Purrier has not claimed to be mentally ill, but friends and relatives said that he had recently suffered some form of great mental distress. And while the suspect in the case of a young woman who was beaten this week in Midtown with a brick remains at large, the police have also suggested that the attacker was unstable.

But therein lies another problem with cases that appear to be tied to mental illness: one person's diagnosis is another person's excuse. Law enforcement officials often bristle at pleas of any form of instability as a defense in a violent crime. And what constitutes a dangerous mental illness can be highly subjective.

As it is, stereotypes about the mentally ill and their proclivity toward violence ''pervades the justice system and is reflected in statements by public officials,'' said Professor Perlin.

''We are beholden to visual imagery of the 'crazy' person and we attribute what we know about a few to all. Mental health reform responds to one media circus, as was the case when Hinckley shot Reagan and there were calls for institutionalization without thinking of impact. We should not aspire to return to that.''